Stalking into the bush with a knife and briefcase in search of asparagus, the Kenyan healer symbolizes a growing belief among African herbalists that ancient wisdom could turn the tide of a modern disease.

"To me this is a natural pharmacy," said Githae, 56, gesturing at a woodland clearing on the slopes of Mount Kenya. "We have seen such miraculous cures from this natural pharmacy in the last 30 years that I don't tell anybody 'you are going to die'," he said.

Traditional healers across the continent say their remedies offer huge potential to fight diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia that prey on HIV patients, but accuse governments and doctors of spurning their offers of help. "How can we ignore such knowledge when people are dying like flies?," said the gray-bearded Githae, who cuts a slightly incongruous figure wearing a white lab coat in the woods.

Battling what they say is a wall of scepticism and prejudice in much of the medical establishment, herbalists are hoping to win more government support to distribute their remedies.

Africa has 28.1 million of the world's 40 million people living with HIV-AIDS. Healers say even the most sceptical of Western-trained doctors need all the help they can get.

"SHORES OF DEATH"

Herbalists argue that their pills and potions are cheap, available in remote areas, and above all, they work. "We went with those people who the white doctors had abandoned and told to go home and die," said Credo Mutwa, an 80-year-old South African healer and visionary. "We brought them back from the shores of death," he said, adding that he uses the Sutherlandia Frutescens plant to combat AIDS-related wasting.

For centuries, African healers have used plants to treat illnesses like diarrhea and lung infections that attack immune systems shattered by HIV. It is these diseases, rather than the virus itself, that can kill AIDS patients.

Such herbs are affordable. Githae charges 250 shillings (US$3.20) a week for a concoction for HIV patients that he says boosts their immunity levels. Pharmacies charge at least 1,500 shillings for an equivalent doses of antiretroviral drugs.

While doctors say they want more evidence that traditional remedies work, many patients swear by them. "I was suspicious of herbal medicine. I thought of it as witchcraft," said one 26-year-old, HIV-positive Kenyan woman, who uses a Neem tree soap to treat herpes. "Now everyone asks me what I use on my skin because I don't have ugly wounds any more," she said, waiting at a herbal clinic in a Nairobi slum.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says 80 percent of people rely on herbs in countries from South Africa to Ethiopia. In Ghana, there is about one traditional practitioner for every 400 people, compared to one doctor per 12,000 people.

Doctors worry that the tonic soups and ground root powders dished out by the herbalists may expose patients to exploitation by quacks or, worse, trigger dangerous side effects. Herbalists counter that they could have a greater positive impact if more governments would allow them to use their medicines in hospitals and provide registration procedures to weed out charlatans. Prejudice on both sides of the divide between healers and their drug-dispensing counterparts has hindered cooperation.

COLONIAL OUTLAWS

Herbalists say much of the scepticism dates back to colonial days, when imperial governments ruling countries as diverse as Namibia and Burkina Faso outlawed traditional medicine, branding it as "primitive" and against the grain of progress. "They look at us with mistrust; we look at them with a superiority complex," said Serge Eholie, deputy clinic head at the infectious and tropical disease unit of the Treichville hospital in Ivory Coast, west Africa.

"But no African doctor can dismiss traditional healers or pretend they are not there. We need to train them and work with them so they can help us treat people," Eholie said. Repeating a gripe common among health officials across the continent, Eholie said the main problem was that herbal lore passed on by grandmothers was seldom researched and documented.

Plant treatments suffered an extra setback in Ivory Coast, which has one of west Africa's highest HIV prevalence rates, standing at 10 to 12 percent. A herbal drug named Therastim was billed as a wonder cure for AIDS in January last year. Hope evaporated when Treichville researchers said they had found no evidence that it worked.

MIXED RESPONSE

Governments have given herbalists a mixed reception. Tiny Benin allocated $14,000 to developing traditional medicine in its 1998-1999 budget, but Ugandan herbalists say the government has only recently realized their potential.

"There is no council, no legislation, and no policy on traditional healers. We are working in the dark," said Dorothy Balaba, director of Traditional and Modern Health Practitioners Together Against AIDS And Other Diseases.

Kenya said this year that a task force had been set up to prepare a bill to integrate herbal medicine into the formal healthcare system, but the Kenya Medical Association warned that bringing herbalists into hospitals could cause chaos.

Fears in Kenya are echoed across Africa by doctors who say the ideas of the ancients must be vetted by modern laboratories. "We must legalize something on the basis of evidence," said Andrew Kitua, director general of Tanzania's National Institute for Medical Research. "Science has to lead us."